


These Twists and Turns of Fate

by Kendrick_Harlow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adoption, Antichrists are Punks, Australian!Jesse, Castiel is Moderately Okay at Feelings, Dad!Castiel, Dean is Bad at Feelings, Family, Gen, Growing Up, His Name is Nathaniel, Nate for Short, Older!Claire, Older!Jesse, Sam is the Voice of Reason, The Antichrist, The Antichrist Is Not Evil, Two Antichrists, older!everyone - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 11:16:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10830165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendrick_Harlow/pseuds/Kendrick_Harlow
Summary: Castiel is determined to raise the new antichrist to be morally sound. Well, relatively morally sound. He'll consider "better than Lucifer" a win at this point.





	These Twists and Turns of Fate

**Author's Note:**

> A highly unlikely path, but fun to play with. Castiel decides to adopt Lucifer's son in an attempt to make him a force for good.

“Congrats, you’re a grandma,” is the first thing Dean grunts, half-way to spitting, as he swerves to a stop outside Mary’s pick-up location. Sam is riding shotgun. Castiel is in the back, and at first it looks like he’s holding his trench coat balled up in his arms, the way he does when it’s too dirty to wear, until Mary notices how his entire body is cocooned around it protectively. Like he would die first before anyone could touch it. He loves his coat, but not _that_ much. Dean’s comment sinks in.

“Please don’t tell me that’s Lucifer’s baby,” Mary sighs.

“He’s not going to hurt anyone,” Cas insists, hugging the coat tighter. “I’m going to take care of him and raise him to be morally sound.”

“Hear that?” Dean butts in with the kind of acid that belongs in a locked lab cabinet. “He’s going to raise the spawn of Satan to be on the side of the _angels._ ”

“Don’t call him spawn,” Cas snaps. Already, dark circles have begun forming underneath his eyes. Mary would have said the kid was sucking the life out of him if she didn’t know that was a normal process for new parents. She’d been a virtual zombie for weeks after Dean was born, and worse after Sam.

The baby starts to cry.

“Guys,” Sam sighs, “can we dial it down a little? Yeah, Dean, we know you’re not happy about this, but Cas clearly isn’t letting that kid go anytime soon, and I’d rather he stick with us than run off into the wind, wouldn’t you?”

Dean grumbles, though acquiesces. Realizing that she’s standing outside the car like a spectator, Mary shakes herself back into the game, inching open the backseat door. The last thing she wants to do is set off Cas, who’s looking at her with wide eyes, begging for her to understand. She feels herself give.

“Can I hold him?” she asks gently.

Cas doesn’t seem to fully trust her, though nods and hands the screeching baby over. Mary rocks him the way she remembers rocking Sam, which, to her, hadn’t been more than a year ago. The baby continues to sniffle and moan.

“If we’re going to do this,” Mary decides, “we’re going to have to stop off at a store to get supplies. Sooner, rather than later, I’d say, unless you want Cas’ coat acting as a diaper.”

Dean pulls off to the side of the road not one mile later. Mary gives the boys a list of supplies to get while she snags a pack of diapers and a tiny onesie—the immediate concerns. She has the cashier cut off the tags and slit the top of the bag open before she darts into the women’s restroom and flips open the changing table. She makes quick work of getting the boy properly situated.

Halfway across the store, Dean is intent on giving Cas the cold shoulder, while Sam tries to be the responsible adult and figure out what formula to get for newborns. The first sound Dean makes is when he passes the baby clothing section, snorts, and holds up a “Little Devil” shirt. Cas glares.

It’s only been two hours, and Sam’s already had enough of this. “Dean, go wait in the car.”

Dean rolls his eyes, turns around, and doesn’t look back. As soon as he’s out of sight, Sam puts a consoling hand on Cas’ shoulder. “Don’t worry about him.”

“Don’t worry?” Cas replies, his voice hissing. “He kept saying that we could ‘fix this.’ Fix _what_? The baby doesn’t need to be fixed.”

It rings loudly in his ears because he knows it’s a conversation they’ve had before.

 _Damn it, Cas, we can fix this,_ Dean had pleaded, as Castiel stood surrounded by holy flames. Liar, liar, angel on fire.

 _Dean, it’s not broken,_ Castiel had replied, trying to remind his friend why working with Crowley and opening Purgatory would be for the greater good. The lesser of two evils, as it were.

Eight years later, and it seems like they’ll never agree on what risks to take, what sacrifices to make, how far to drag themselves through the mud before realizing they’ve gone too far to ever be clean again.

Castiel realizes that maybe it’s not the baby that Dean thinks needs to be fixed, but Castiel himself, as it always has been. Maybe Dean doesn’t think Cas is up to the task of teaching the antichrist to be good. Maybe they’ll all only ever be the broken toys of grander beings.

“Cas…” says Sam with caution, “you know…Dean won’t hurt the baby, right? That Dean would never do that?”

Cas snaps out of his reverie. “Do I? We don’t have a history of benevolence when we both think we’re right.”

“I know he’s mad, and he’s being a dick about it, and frankly we’re both a little worried about the _son of Lucifer_ thing, but he knows you care about this kid. Neither of us are going to do anything unless we absolutely have to, okay?”

“Define ‘have to.’”

“Like, if the kid starts trying to suck out people’s souls like Amara did.”

“And what would you do?”

“I still think the best option would be to try grace extraction.”

Cas didn’t look relieved.

Time to change subjects. Sam scrolled through them in his head, searching for something a little more benign. “So…have you picked out a name yet?”

Wrong choice. His question starts a whole new wave of panic.

 

By the time they’re back on the road, the baby is clean and clothed but still anxious to be fed, Dean is suspiciously quiet, and Sam is trying to calm down Cas, who continues worrying over naming the baby and how on Earth they’re going to get a birth certificate. Sam wonders if he can convince Jody to say she found the baby abandoned somewhere so that Cas can officially adopt the kid, but then remembers that “Jimmy Novak” is in trouble for child negligence in concern to Claire, so there’s no way he’d be cleared for adoption. And Sam and Dean are both wanted criminals. And Mary is technically dead.

Sam tunes back into Cas, who has brought is concerns to Mary, and is subtly terrified about choosing a name that will be embarrassing, like how “Dick” used to be an acceptable nickname before it became more common as slang for male genitalia. He uses this example in particular. Sam doesn’t laugh because that would be insensitive. About three seconds later, though, Dean chucks a small package at Cas’ head without a word.

It’s a baby names book.

It feels like the beginning of an apology.

 

Half of the names get crossed out because they’re names of Cas’ siblings. Then Cas decides he wants to retain semi-angelic nomenclature while not painting a societal target on his kid’ head. Surprisingly, it’s Dean who asks, “What about Nathaniel?”

Sam knows that, for Dean, contributing to the conversation is as good as an “I’m sorry”—not necessarily admitting he’s wrong, just that his reaction was harsh, and that he’d rather have Cas with them than going solo with the kid. The idea of Cas trying to wrangle a baby carrier into his rusting pick-up truck unnerves Sam as well.

“Nathaniel?” Cas repeats, either incredulously or to test it out. It’s hard to tell.

Dean shrugs. “’S a normal kid name, but I dunno, lots of angel names end in i-e-l, right? Like _Castiel_.”

At last, Cas’ shoulders relax from the way they’d been hunched up all night. The tension eases. “Nathaniel could work.”

 

Dean, of course, only ever refers to the baby as “Nate” or sometimes “Natey,” and Cas seems pleased enough by the development. Nicknames are good, he thinks. Nicknames are human. Nathaniel can be a Nate, just the way Castiel is a Cas.

 

Nate grows at normal baby rates, which they’d half-expected he might not. Sam and Mary get twitchy when he reaches six months, but nothing happens…aside from some minor teleporting. Well, _flying_ , Cas explains. He’s starting to stretch his little wings. He can’t go more than a few feet right now, though, which is a blessing that everyone hopes will hold until he’s old enough to understand why he shouldn’t leave the bunker.

Nate’s favorite destinations to fly to are A) on top of the table whenever Castiel is reading at it and B) right over Sam’s head, so that he has to flail not to let the kid drop.

“I think he just likes the view from up there,” Dean mocks him.

Sam doesn’t mention his fear that Nate is drawn to any residual grace Lucifer may have left behind after using Sam as his vessel. With any luck, Dean’s right and Nate’s simply flocking to the tallest person in the room, which is always Sam.

“Go to Dean,” Sam tries to prompt. Nate stubbornly refuses.

“He doesn’t like me,” Dean ascertains.

“You don’t spend much time around him,” Sam replies. “He probably thinks _you_ don’t like _him_.”

Sam tries handing Nate to Dean. Dean accepts with hesitation. Three seconds later, Nate pops himself back over Sam’s head. This game continues for several minutes. Nate cackles in delight.

 

Two nights later, Sam wakes up from a nightmare and goes to check on Nate in case it’s prophetic. Instead, he finds Dean rocking the baby and humming AC/DC. It works as well as it did for the shifter baby they’d taken care of for a few days years ago. Over Dean’s shoulder, Nate looks at Sam, but does not fly over to him. Sam leaves silently.

 

At one year old, Nate is starting to look more defined—he’s healthy, with a thick mop of chestnut brown hair and vivid blue eyes. He looks, Dean knows, like his biological parents, but that doesn’t mean he looks unlike Cas. They could probably pass for blood relatives, and the fact that Nate’s begun tilting his head to the side when he thinks something is interesting or strange only reinforces that notion.

 

Nate is a smart child. He looks at Dean and says, “De!” He looks at Sam and says, “Sa!” He looks at Cas and chants repeatedly, “Da! Da! Da!”

“Oh, man,” Dean chuckles, “Lucifer’s gonna be pissed when he finds out his kid is calling you ‘Dad.’”

 

Lucifer gets free when Nate is four.

They guard him, surround him with sigils, dig up every weapon and spell they can find, take turns on lookout through the night. In the end, despite their best efforts, Lucifer manages to snag his son. Mary dies trying to stop him. Sam wakes to the sound of her gurgling her own blood and gasping assurances that she’s alright with going back to Heaven. She’s gone before Dean and Cas arrive. Dean throws a book against the wall. Sam covers his eyes, either so that he doesn’t have to look or so that no one sees the tears. Cas fights against the blankness that only comes with shock, wanting to let it consume him, but understanding that _his son is missing._ The air is lead.

Two days later, Nate knocks on the window of the Impala, covered in blood, and won’t explain, except to say that “the bad guy is gone.”

 

Nate has nightmares. A lot of nightmares, after that. Sam wishes he wasn’t a little relieved—wishes he didn’t think that nightmares meant he acknowledged that what happened was _evil,_ which is a very human, morally-correct thing to do.

 

Chuck/God pops in for a visit. Literally. Castiel makes as if to grab Nate—who’s getting a little too big to pick up easily—and get the hell out of there before his father notices he’s adopted the antichrist.

“I’m not here for him,” Chuck is quick to reassure.

“Good,” Dean says, “’cause you weren’t getting him.”

Sam rolls his eyes at his brother before putting on a more polite mask for their guest. “If you don’t mind me asking, why _are_ you here then? Didn’t you go on vacation with Amara?”

Chuck taps his fingers on the table a few times. A nervous tick. Whatever it is gives _God_ a nervous tick. That can’t be good. Chuck clears his throat. “I’ve been thinking about reincarnating the archangels.”

Nope. Not good.

It’ll be different this time, Chuck claims. He has a plan. (Doesn’t he always?) The best way for the archangels to return, he decides, is to have them reborn as human children first, then slowly bestow upon them their full powers. That should teach them respect for all life-forms, humility, etc.

It sounds like a disaster.

And, since normal people aren’t equipped to handle tiny angels, a lot of babysitting.

Spoiler: They end up doing a lot of babysitting.

 

At some point, they’ve become the unofficial helpline for baby angels-to-be. Nate thinks it’s hilarious. “Caught another one, Dad?” he asks Cas as the rumpled angel hangs up the phone.

“In Nevada,” Cas confirms. “I think Claire’s working a case near there. I’ll see if she can check it out.”

“Ooooooor,” implores Nate, batting his big blue eyes and flashing his brightest smile, “ _we_ could go check it out.”

“Nate, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why?” Nate hops up onto the desktop and begins swinging his legs. He doesn’t stop smiling. “It’s not like I have school tomorrow, since I’m not _allowed_ to go to normal school yet, because you all think I’ll miraculously heal someone’s scraped knee or something.”

“I just don’t like introducing you to new angels before we know which ones they are.”

Nate stops swinging his legs. His eyes narrow as he tilts his head to the side, thinking for a moment, before coming to a conclusion. “Dad, a baby Lucifer can’t hurt me. A big Lucifer couldn’t hurt me and I was _four_.”

He is scarily perceptive, this boy, Cas thinks. He ruffles his adoptive son’s hair. “That doesn’t mean I don’t worry about it.”

“But can we _please_ go?” Nate begs. “What if I get Dean to go with us? Then can we all go?”

Cas takes the wager, thinking it futile. Dean’s off on a hunt in California. His last one, he says, but he always says that. It doesn’t help that Nate keeps secretly healing him, so that his aging joints don’t ache as much, and he can fight like he did in his late 20s.

 

Dean agrees to meet them there. The hunt was a bust, he explains over the phone, as Cas stares at Nate and wonders if the boy had something to do with this. The unnerving grin he gets in return doesn’t help.

Although, Dean immediately regrets his decision when the infant angel ends up being Gabriel, who already has a penchant for breaking out of cribs, surpassing baby gates, and opening cookie jars. Usually all three at once.

“Babysitting him is gonna _suck_ ,” Dean complains.

“Why’s that?” Nate asks, helping Gabriel build block towers so that the toddler can knock them down. The wood pieces crash to the ground. Gabriel squeals with unholy glee and throws a block labeled “D” at Dean’s shoe.

“You were saying, Natey?”

 

At nine, Nate has grown fond of rebellion. When he doesn’t want to do something, he responds with, “You can’t make me! I’m the antichrist!”

This, thankfully, doesn’t result in destruction as much as it does migraines. “He’s just testing his limits,” Sam says. “You know, seeing what you’ll let him get away with. Remember how I ran away all the time when I was his age?”

“Remember how you’d still end up at school the next day?” Dean reminds him.

Nate runs away.

His note is very sarcastic: “Dear Dad and Dean and Sam, I’m going to go explore the world because I guess one day I’m supposed to rule it or something. And I’m bored. So bye. Love, Nate.”

Cas freaks for a good hour before calming down under the placation that Nate is damn near indestructible, knows how to kill monsters, and hasn’t tossed aside his low profile yet. They call up all the favors they can to help with the search. “It’s times like this,” Cas sighs at the end of the first night, after reading the note again, “that I remember he’s Lucifer’s son.”

 

They get a call from an unknown number a week later. “Who is this?” Dean asks. His voice is haggard. His veins are filled with more coffee than blood at this point.

“Nathaniel Robert Winchester,” responds a very familiar voice. “Wassup?”

“Nate!” Dean exclaims, loud enough so that everyone in the bunker can hear it. Footsteps follow like echoes. “Where are you? Are you okay? Do you know how freaking _worried_ we were?”

“I’m _fine,_ ” Nate answers too nonchalantly. It’s both what he does when he’s perfectly okay and what he does when he’s scared stiff, so that’s not comforting. Usually the latter comes with a tremor, though, and Dean doesn’t hear one as Nate rolls on. “Actually, did you know there’s another antichrist? He’s really cool. His name’s Jesse. He’s Australian.”

Cas appears, white-faced, in the doorway. _Jesse,_ he mouths, because angel-hearing.

“Yeah, hey, Nate, is Jesse with you?” Dean asks, trying to sound calm.

“Uh-huh.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“Sure.”

There’s a brief pause as the phone gets handed over. A very thick Australian accent picks up. “’ello. I don’t suppose this is Dean Winchester the hunter?”

“Hello, Jesse.”

“Long time no see,” the man answers congenially enough. His tone is no reassurance. Some of the worst monsters Dean had faced sounded perfectly amicable. “Found ya kid. He was hangin’ out with the roos. Guess some things just come with the title.”

“Guess so,” Dean replies, too nervous to say much else. For all he knows, Jesse’s PO’ed about the last time they met, when Cas nearly killed him.

Jesse decides point out the elephant in the room.

“So let me get this straight,” he continues, “after Castiel was all up himself about _me_ being the antichrist, he’s now _raising_ the next antichrist.”

From off the line, Nate chirps, “Pretty much.”

Nate is so grounded after this.

“Look,” Dean says, “you didn’t turn out super evil, so we figured he might be okay.” Half-truth. “And aside from his terrible sense of humor and disregard for authority, he has been.”

Jesse’s voice goes soft. “Yeah. Alright. Tell you what, let’s all meet for brekkie—dinner in your case. Time difference and all. Anywhere near you do all-day Belgian waffles?”

Dean rattles off the name of the nearest place he can think of.

“Ace. Meet you there in an hour. I think we’ve got things to discuss.”

“Hang on,” Dean calls out. “Can Cas say hi to Nate before you hang up? He’s been missing for, like, a week.”

There’s another exchanging of phones. Cas is practically shaking with relief that none of his more opinionated siblings have gotten to Nate. Dean goes to fill Sam in.

 

It’s weird, sitting at the diner, waiting amongst haggard truckers and little old ladies having brunch, anticipating the arrival of two antichrists any minute and praying this doesn’t get hostile. Everyone barely manages not to launch out of their seats when a lean brunette in his late 20s slips through the door with their nine-year-old. Jesse looks at Nate, then to Cas, and back, as if he sees something fascinating. He bumps Nate’s shoulder. The boy takes that as some kind of cue and sprints towards his family. “Hi, Dad. Hi, Dean and Sam. Jesse says I should say sorry I ran off because you guys were worried, even though I left a note and I’ve got superpowers.”

Cas looks up at Jesse with lined eyes and breathes, “Thank you.” Crisis averted.

Jesse nods in response. “I have to say, I was surprised. Didn’t get how the angel I remembered could be the awesome dad Nate kept talking about, but looks like you’ve changed.”

“A lot,” Cas agrees. “And I’m sorry for what I did. It wasn’t fair to judge you like that. I was more…close-minded back then.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re off the hook, though.” Jesse’s posture remains light, though his voice is as serious as a midnight storm. “I won’t lie—I considered not giving the kid back. Thought you might be using him for some agenda. He knows how to find me if that ends up being the case, and you _do not_ want two antichrists going up against you.”

“Similarly,” Cas rallies, “if you ever take him against his will, remember that the Winchesters have stopped more apocalypses than you have fingers.”

Jesse breaks out into smirk. “We have ourselves a deal. Now, let’s talk the raising and care of an antichrist.”

Jesse comes over a lot after that. It helps that he can teleport, but he complains that the time difference is a bitch, and he’s frequently accompanied by some form of caffeine. After about a year, he’s their go-to babysitter for Nate, although Nate’s old enough that they’re not allowed to call it “babysitting.”

It would have been nice if everything had been hunky-dory as soon as the big bad was back in the ground, but Sam, Dean, Cas, and their menagerie of hunter friends still run into big game every year or two. This year starts with a dead man who keeps coming back. At first, they think zombie or ghoul. They go, they gank him, and one week later, he’s at it again. He gets worse each time. He’s more-or-less a dickbag human with telekinesis when they start, but four deaths later, he’s downright animalistic. The closest lore they can find is on Revenants, which remains vague.

“Can I go _please_?” Nate begs as Sam, Dean, and Cas all pack bags. “I’m _twelve._ I’m old enough.”

“This ain’t gonna be a short hunt, kiddo,” Dean tells him. “You’ve got school Monday. Besides, you get to hang out with Jesse this weekend. That’s way more fun.”

Nate starts a tirade about how his younger self was insane for wanting to attend normal kid school. The hours are more unholy that he is, he complains. More unholy than Jesse and him combined. Dean can’t argue against school sucking. He tries to put emphasis on how many friends Nate has made, though. Friends, Nate is quick to point out, who he loves, but who can’t know where he lives, what his family does, or what Nate himself can accomplish. Also, all his angel puns are wasted on them.

While they argue, Cas’ phone buzzes. He looks at the caller ID, then walks to the other side of the room to escape the racket. “Claire?”

Nate kills the argument within seconds to listen in. When the phone call’s over, he tries playing at being cool. All he’s missing is sunglasses. “Does Claire need help?” he asks, leaning against the table with the utmost casualness. “Because I could go help since you guys are busy with this Revenant guy.”

“She wants to stop by,” Cas replies. “ _Put her feet up,_ as it were.” Cas still hasn’t grown out of the air-quotes. Sam and Dean both roll their eyes behind him in unison.

“You tell her about Jesse coming over?” Sam asks.

“Yes.”

Dean gives a sharp “hm” that can only mean he’s trying to figure out how dangerous it will be to have Jesse and Claire in the same room. Because Jesse is an attractive guy with a goofy smile and piercing eyes the color of envy. Heads turn for him the way they used to turn for Dean, which is a dangerous thing indeed. And Claire has the kind of dangerous, alluring confidence that demands attention. Dean had long since made it his job to give her boyfriends, girlfriends, and casual acquaintances the shovel talk. Sam isn’t going to be surprised if Dean calls Jesse in the middle of the night to rehash the speech.

“Nate,” Sam whispers to his nephew, “do me a favor?”

“Don’t let Dean scare Jesse off? Or super-offend Claire?”

“Please.”

 

The first time Claire had met Nate, he was still a baby, and it had hurt seeing her Dad’s face care so much about another kid when she’d been left in the cold for so long. But it paid off to keep working with the Winchesters, networking-wise, so she tried to get over it. She avoided Nate pretty well until he was about three. She broke her leg and Dean mama-beared her into healing up at the bunker. Where Nate was.

The first week was tense. Nate would ask her to play, and she’d always answer, “Not now” or “Maybe later.” He called Castiel “Dad” like it was the easiest thing in the world. Too often Claire wished she could do the same, that it was all so simple, but her Dad was dead and that was the wish of a little girl.

“Are you mad at me?” Nate asked her outright one night.

The question made her heart jump a little. God, she didn’t want the effing hell spawn mad at her, sweet as he may have looked. “No,” she answered.

“But you’re mad when I’m around,” he clarified. “Is it ‘cuz we have the same Dad?”

“We don’t have the same Dad.” Claire felt her hackles raise. “Cas isn’t my Dad and he’s not your Dad either. Not really.”

“I’m ‘dopted,” Nate said. “I know. Both of us ‘dopted.” Then, looking as serious as a three-year-old could, Nate continued, “Family. Don’t. End. In. Blood.”

Claire stared him down long and hard. He stared right back. For the first time, she didn’t see a tiny destroyer of worlds—she saw every single kid she’d ever met whose family had been ripped apart by the supernatural. Nate was just another orphan. Like her. She let out a slow breath and began carving out a place in her heart where he might fit in.

Fast-forward eight years, she’s swinging by the bunker to rest up, and her “little brother” almost charges her at the door. He’s tall for a twelve-year-old, so the action is with considerable force. “Claire!”

This is going nowhere good.

“Nate,” she greets, a little more hesitant. “Been a while.”

It has been. He’s looking more and more like Castiel by the month, which never fails to make Claire wonder if he has some measure of control over his appearance—if he chooses the mess of dark hair, angled nose, and summer-sky irises to fit in better. He balances it out with thinner lips and rounder eyes, though sometimes she gazes into the mirror and, paranoid, imagines he might have stolen those features from her. They can pass for biological siblings easy enough that it’s scary.

She reminds herself that there are more pressing issues at hand, because the one feature Nate definitely inherited from the Devil is that grin.

“Soooooo,” Nate trails, playful, like he’s about to talk about a new favorite game, “have you met Jesse yet?”

 

Jesse is roughly Claire’s age and smells of coffee and eucalyptus. His aura is the tiniest bit _off_ , enough to get Claire’s hunter instincts tingling, while his expression is invitingly jovial as he sticks out a calloused hand. “G’day. You must be Claire. I’m Jesse.”

Nate’s off to the side, trying not to relay any kind of excitement.

Claire supposes it would be impolite to reply “Jesse the Other Antichrist, right?” She settles for a slightly snarky, ambiguous, “I’ve heard you and Nate are like two peas in a pod.”

Jesse examines her for a second, trying to puzzle out if there was, in fact, an intended second meaning there. Dean had told Claire about Jesse, but had not told Jesse he’d told Claire about Jesse.

“She knows,” Nate pipes up to clarify.

“Oh.” Jesse looks a little taken aback and somewhat sheepish. “So. That’s me then. Makes it easy to keep up with Nate, at least. Special set of skills and all.” He clears his throat. This is not going as swimmingly as he’d hoped. “You’re Nate’s sister, right?”

“Kind of.”

Jesse nods. “I was adopted, too. And then I ran away to Australia to live with the kangaroos.”

Claire snorts out a chuckle at the casual way he says it, and because it’s not nearly the strangest thing she’s ever heard. Nate beams as the tension begins to dissolve. It’s a look that concerns Claire, though one she can’t decipher at first. She puzzles it out an hour later, while they’re watching a Cas-approved movie, with Nate hogging one side of the couch, leaving Claire and Jesse squished on the other. _Oh my God,_ Claire realizes. _He’s shipping us, the little troll._

It turns out that the Revenant Sam, Dean, and Cas are off hunting is not only one of several, but is also a direct result of the Reapers collectively throwing a temper tantrum. They’re trying to piss off Winchesters and company— _see what happens when people come back from the dead all willy-nilly_? they demand. There aren’t enough balanced Reapers to stop them, or soldiers of Heaven that care. Angel blades seem to work well enough in taking the Revenants down, though, so at least there’s that. Sam audibly groans when the internet gets ahold of the dead coming back to life and apocalypse blogs pop up like dandelions. Tomorrow, they’ll call up all their contacts to give them the scoop, and see if they can track down any anti-Revenant spells for hunters without a Heaven-blessed knife laying around.

With that weighing on their shoulders, the short walk from the car to the bunker entrance is a slog. They are not in the mood for any surprises.

So of course there’s a garden in the middle of the bunker. With a giant tree in the middle. And a tree house in the tree.

Dean takes one look at the scene, claims, “I don’t even care,” and walks straight past it, toward his own room. “It’s not even the weirdest crap they’ve done.”

Sam sighs, then shouts to the bunker at large, “Hey guys? What’s with mini-Eden here?”

Nate pops his head out of the tree house window. “It’s a science project. Kind of.”

Sam raises an eyebrow.

Jesse and Claire appear, Claire bearing coffee, and Jesse with a steaming cup of the weirdest smelling tea Sam has ever come across.

“His fault,” Claire declares, jabbing a thumb in Jesse’s direction.

“Your supplies were low,” Jesse defends. “Some of the ingredients are exceedingly rare. I wanted to know if, between Nate and I, we could make them a little…less rare. Besides, some of them can be made into drinkable spells.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re drinking one right now.”

“Nah. This is normal tea. There’s more in the billy if you want some.”

Claire snorts. “But Jesse did spend a good eighteen hours as a girl before we managed to turn him back.”

Sam stares at them levelly for a solid minute before deciding that they aren’t joking. “I’ll pass on the tea, thanks.” Normally, he’d be interested in hearing about what kind of plants they managed to grow and what kind of spells Jesse had figured out, but right now, his curiosity is suffocated by his need for sleep. He leaves Cas, who collapses into the relocated sofa. Claire hands him a second cup of coffee.

“No voodoo in this one,” she promises. “Unless you count a stupid amount of caffeine.”

“I don’t need—”

“Have you seen your face?” She plops onto the sofa next to him. “Yeah, you do.”

If there’s one magical power Claire has, it’s the ability to convince her not-dad of what’s best for him. Castiel accepts the coffee. To their left, Nate ambles out of the tree house (the ladder is too much fun to consider flying), and slips in beside them. He memorizes every detail of this moment.

The couch is squishy and smells funny, the way couches get when they’re old and well-used. The shape of it pushes Claire closer to Castiel, so that her shoulder leans up against his, and Nate wonders if biology is screaming at them that they _are_ father and daughter, and he questions how long it will take before their souls agree. The floral scent of the garden contrasts with the faint post-mission musk that hangs around his adoptive dad, speaking of long nights hunting monsters—and though Nate doesn’t like the taste of coffee, he finds its smell comforting. His dad’s hand ruffles his hair, and he’s wearing a lopsided smile to match his lopsided tie, and it all speaks of love. Across the room, Jesse tries to hide his smile behind his tea. The smile speaks to Claire and says, “I told you so.” Nate can hear a shower running down the hall and, across the way, the faint lilting of “Hey Jude.” If Heaven isn’t exactly like this, then Heaven is done wrong, Nate thinks. Because this is warm and safe and _home_ , and he believes he’s finally written reality _right._

He wasn’t meant to stay with his biological dad, Lucifer, and rule the Earth. That had been loveless.

He wasn’t meant to destroy Heaven and all of the angels. That had been lonely.

If he hadn’t stayed with Castiel, he would never have understood true family and all its comforts.

If he had let Claire estrange herself, their dad would always watch Nate with the dim expectancy that he would never be good enough to raise a kid, let alone one with Nate’s pedigree.

If he hadn’t tracked down Jesse, he wouldn’t have had anyone else who truly understood him and the burdens of being an antichrist.

He hadn’t wanted to let Mary die at Lucifer’s hands, but had never found a way to save her that wouldn’t have ended in disaster. For all that he loves his grandmother, he knows she was very flawed. He let her go after fifteen realities. The Balance wanted her. He surrendered.

So far, this reality is the best one, and he doesn’t want to risk losing it. If that means he has to sneak out and fight monsters meant to kill his people, or grow gardens with obscure ingredients they will need to solve the Revenant Crisis, or push Jesse and Claire together on the couch because they’ll one day be a team that’ll give the Winchester legacy a run for its money, then so be it.

And if only the other antichrist in the room has even the slightest inkling of what Nate’s done, well, it’s probably for the best. He’d probably be _so_ grounded otherwise.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The end is how I reconcile the apparent brainwashing we saw with this particular outcome. Nate may have, at first, considered a path of evil, but then realized it wasn't working out for him, so he kept rewriting reality and accidentally stumbled upon this family dynamic in the process. Now he's a happy little antichrist.


End file.
